The Case Against 1/48th (Edited)

There are lots of opinions around what scale 25/28mm miniatures our especially since manufacturers produce minis that while obstinately are 25/28mm vary greatly in size, proportion and appearance. There is a trend for WWII vehicle kits to be produced in 1/56th scale both in plastic and in resin and I'm throwing my hat into that ring. When I scratchbuild buildings I like to build in a scale and 1/56th is the one I have settled on for my town of Calamity. But even there I don't restrict my self to "scale" parts first because almost nothing is actually produced in that scale and second because why should I restrict myself to a scale when parts from any of the railroad scales will work? In the end if the proportions look good then use it!

I'm actually not trying to fan the flames of the scale wars but I was challenged to provide proof of why I feel that 1/48 is not only to big but way to big to be the "scale" of our 25/28mm miniatures as well as the Heroic versions standing closer to 30mm. I'm firmly in the camp of 1/56th as the best compromise scale. Unfortunately that precludes the use of the the railroad scales at least in the US; 1/64th or S scale and 1/48th or O Scale. 

Since sizes of minis tend to very quite a bit between miniatures I picked out a variety of miniatures to use as examples. They come from Black Scorpion, Reaper Miniatures, Dixon, Wargames Foundry and Knuckleduster. For scale examples I'm using flex track in the following scales and sizes: HO standard gauge, On30 (O scale but narrow gauge using the same spacing as HO), S standard gauge and O standard gauge.

I have also included pictures of the setup I used. My goal was to have the top of the bases that I use (and they are all on the same brand of bases) level with the inside edge of the bottom rail. Then I took a few group shots standing against the track as well as some singles against the O standard gauge track to really show just how short our minis are against it.

Here is the track. Top to bottom: HO Scale Standard (1/87), On30 Scale Narrow (1/48), S Scale Standard (1/64), O Scale Standard (1/48)

The setup using the HO Standard flextrack

Definitely to small for the minis but usable. From left to right; Black Scorpion, Reaper Miniatures, Wargames Foundry, Dixon, Knuckleduster

On30, exactly the same spacing between the rails as the HO standard, only the scale has changed so in this case the distance represents 30" rather than 4' 8 1/2" as it does in the HO shot.

S Scale, getting much closer again the distance between the rails is 4' 8 1/2". I like the feel of this and this is what I would like to use but equipment in S Scale is hard to find and somewhat expensive.

O Scale Standard gauge, they are definitely looking quite short here considering, again, the distance between the
rails is 4' 8 1/2". Only a couple of these miniatures are going to be close or over 5' tall  based on the photo.

All the following are closeups of the miniatures compared against the O Scale Standard Gauge track. Yea, this guy is barely over 5' tall.

S Scale Vs On30 for Calamity

I purchased a single Spectrum Passenger Car from Bachmann from their On30 line to compare against the American Flyer S Scale equipment that I already have on hand. Based on what I have heard from a couple of sources the old American Flyer S Scale stuff may be a little on the large size.

So is that really true or not? Remember what I'm really looking for here are proportions. In this context my O Scale passenger car is close to the same height and width as the S Scale passenger car. The biggest difference is length which is basically irrelevant within the context of the game. Now the reason that the Standard gauge S Scale car is as big as the Narrow gauge O Scale car is that proportionately the Narrow gauge car is about 2/3rds the size of a Standard gauge car. So proportionately the physical size is just about perfect for what I'm trying to accomplish which is to have something that looks and feels right with the western miniatures that I have. If you compare the doors at the end of the cars though you can see that the O Scale door is very tall compared to our miniatures. So within that context you can see that O Scale (or 1/48) really is just to big. The door on the S Scale car is much closer to what I want to see. So really its a toss up. Either of these will work for my purpose.

American Flyer S Scale Passenger Car

Bachmann/Spectrum O Scale Passenger Car (On30)

Citizens of Calamity admire the Bachmann Spectrum Car. It comes completes with lights and seats.

Some Citizens in front of the Spectrum On30 Passenger Car. From left to right; Foundry, Foundry, Black Scorpion, Dixon, Dixon, Foundry, Dixon, Reaper, Black Scorpion, Black Scorpion

Some Citizens in front of the American Flyer S Passenger Car. From left to right; Foundry, Foundry, Black Scorpion, Dixon, Dixon, Foundry, Dixon, Reaper, Black Scorpion, Black Scorpion

Close Up w/ the American Flyer S Passenger Car

Close Up w/ the Spectrum On30 Passenger Car

The next question to deal with is do I want a standard gauge train with its larger rails (and larger footprint on the board) or will I be happy with a narrow gauge train? In both instances when we look at the track they have the right feel for what they are representing, namely standard gauge track and narrow gauge track within the context of 28mm miniatures.  I really like how the S Scale track looks against the miniatures and not quite so happy with how the HO Scale track looks. If the rail size for the HO track was larger I would be happier. The HO track you see in the photo is from Micro Engineering and its their Code 83 track which represents mainline track in HO Scale and it is what I use for the LA Warehouse District (the Patch) layout. Code 100 HO track is also readily available so that's a small quibble at best. The S track from Tomalco is just about perfect.

So there are two components to making the decision between continuing on with standard gauge S Scale or going with narrow gauge O Scale. I know that proportionately narrow gauge O Scale is good choice. The look and feel is right no matter which way I go. The availability of equipment is becoming a huge issue. While I basically have complete passenger train in S Scale right now (I would like to pick up at least one more passenger car) every car for a freight train would have to be scratch built. I can buy trucks (wheels) and couplers but the resources are definitely limited. There would actually be more available if I went Sn3 but that is expensive and again the number of manufacturers is very limited. I could probably forget about buying a steam locomotive for the train, I would have to scratch build and that is something that I definitely have not done before. In the On30 world there is quite a bit available from a multitude of small manufacturers plus the support from a big manufacturer that puts out cars and locomotives on a regular basis. Just scrolling through eBay show literally hundreds of items available for On30. The item that seems to be missing from eBay is the standard American box car (goods car to those readers in the UK). I'm not contemplating a big train at this point so the amount of stuff I need is relatively limited.

My other option is to buy On30 equipment and swap out the trucks for S Scale standard trucks, which would look just fine visually. The issue there (which I talked about in a previous post) is that I would have to replace the axles on the locomotives. Its not an impossible task by any means but it isn't the easiest thing to do either.

I guess I'm swinging over to using the On30 trains with the HO track, although I still prefer the look of the S Scale equipment. The availability of equipment at, somewhat, reasonable prices is huge. Plus I will actually have choices for locomotives. The final nail in the coffin, so to speak, is that I don't want to spend time scratch building freight cars that could be used on Calamity itself and S Scale will require me to do that. While I want the railroad to look like it belongs as part of the town I don't want it to become an overwhelming time sink which its more than capable of becoming (I'm already fighting the urge to add a couple of turnouts so some of Calamity can have rail served businesses). I already have my LA Warehouse District layout to eat time when I need something else to occupy my hands (and I do intend to get back to it, it has sat somewhat forlorn for over a year now).

I haven't spent anytime working on Calamity at the moment, my efforts are pretty dedicated to getting my ReaperCon entry finished. I had a setback today and I'm stripping down some miniatures back to bare pewter. The 4x4 is coming along pretty well. I hope to finish that tomorrow, I have followed my own advice and I have really cut down the number of figures that will be involved, I'm vacillating between 3 and 4 figures at this point which is down from 8 or so. In dioramas less is definitely more.

I hope everyone has a good week, I'm not sure I'll have a post this week or not.

Railroads for the Old West in 28mm

Trains add a very distinctive look to the gaming table and I feel that its very important for them to have the right look and feel. Whether its a scenario recreating a locomotive chase or a train robbery or as a supporting element to a WWI or WWII game they need to look like they fit in with both our terrain and our miniatures. I have had this discussion of scale and proportion, both with myself (yes, I do talk to myself) and on a couple of forums, before. When we look strictly at scale S Scale (1/64) is the closest scale comparison to our 28mm miniatures. Visually the track is just about perfect, it scales quite nicely with most of the miniatures we use. In other words if we try and pull the old Snidely Whiplash trick of tying our victim to the track their head and feet (sans base) will overhang the rails appropriately. S Scale track is available commercially although it has to be mail ordered. Other components like turnouts and crossings tend to be pretty pricy though. Granted within the context of our games the railroad tends to be very secondary and we are not necessarily interested in putting a lot of track on the table.

Before I get much farther let me define a few things as far as scale and notations are concerned for the gamers out there. HO, S and O (and for O scale I'm referring to American O Scale) refer to specific measuring scales; HO is 1/87, S is 1/64th, and O is 1/48th. Gauge refers to the distance between the rails and I'm going to use US standards here. For American Standard gauge the distance between the rails is 4' 8 1/2". Narrow gauge is anything narrower than this, in general there are two "common" narrow gauge sizes in the US; 36" or 3' (the most common form of narrow gauge in Colorado) between the rails and 24" or 2' (the most popular prototypes being the Maine two-footers) between the rails. There are others but these are the two, more or less, most common narrow gauge sizes. We notate this with the letter "n" followed by a number, like n3 for 3' narrow gauge and n2 for 2' narrow gauge. When you see a notation like this HOn3 we are talking about 3' narrow gauge in HO scale, if HO appears by itself then its always considered to be standard gauge. If you see two digits then the measurement is in inches so n30 denotes rails that are 30" or 2' 6" apart.

A piece of S Scale flex track from Tomalco

When looking for locomotives and rolling stock the problem we run into in S Scale is that there just isn't much available to put on the table other than the track. I have been slowly buying up old American Flyer S Scale passenger cars and engines from their Franklin Frontiersman set as these are pretty much the only source of pre 1900 equipment available in S Scale. I have recently discovered though that the cars are a lot closer to O scale so they are a bit big as is the 4-4-0. The Franklin set is all that is readily (through ebay) available to us in S Scale for our Wild West period.

In the Lead Adventurers forum a number of people have turned to On30, which runs on HO Scale track which is readily available and not particularly expensive especially when compared to S and O scales. On30 is a rare type of narrow gauge but has a good selection of products because it is produced by a major model railroad manufacturer; Bachmann. Bachmann wanted to enter the narrow gauge field but wanted something that would run on their existing HO track so they turned to On30 but used 3' narrow gauge prototypes, the Denver & Rio Grande Western (D&RGW) being one of them. They make a number of locomotives that are very appropriate to our time period (a 4-4-0 American, and a 2-6-0 Mogul) but they are on the expensive side. You will have to haunt eBay for a while in order to catch one at a good price. Despite O scale being much bigger scale wise than our miniatures the On30 looks pretty good with our miniatures, so why is that? Proportionately narrow gauge equipment is about 2/3rds the size of standard gauge equipment so while the scale is a bit large we discover that the proportions are much closer to our miniatures and make a really good match. There is a fair amount of equipment already available in On30 that fits our Wild West era much better than we find in S Scale.

My immediate thoughts are to take the On30 equipment and swap out the On30 scale trucks (wheels) for S Scale standard trucks, which is a pretty easy conversion. Proportionately this is about bang on for S Scale trucks because Bachmann uses a 3' narrow gauge prototype and really should be running on wider track than HO, S Scale track fits the bill. The difficulty will be with the locomotives, I can't just swap out trucks because we dealing with the drivers and the pony truck (and possibly a trailing truck as well) and there aren't going to be any direct swaps possible. I will have to go in and swap out the axles, which is not the easiest thing to do but certainly possible. Hopefully that will give me the best of both worlds, easily obtainable equipment running on the track that I consider to be proportionately correct for our 28mm miniature scale.

I already have an American Flyer Franklin 4-4-0 and some passenger and baggage cars to go along with it but I should be able to readily dispose of that on eBay and help finance the acquisition of some On30 equipment.

The American Flyer Franklin 4-4-0 and Baggage Car from the Frontiersman set circa 1959-60.

I had posed a question about conversions of other scales to S Scale standard on one of my railroad forums. In between the usual Christmas railroad set conversions (which work just fine, just not to my taste) was reference to a website for something called 55n3. Essentially he follows my own argument about scale versus proportion. Its a very interesting website with a lot of helpful information and if you are interested in the railroad side of things its worth checking out: 55n3

So that's where the railroad for Calamity is headed. Incidentally I found out that the Bachmann 2-6-0 Mogul (In the Bumblebee paint scheme. Incidentally this paint scheme is incorrect for our Wild West period, it wasn't introduced until 1949) is very close to the #1 Engine on the Colorado and Northwestern, the railroad I want to model. So the Colorado history is now subject to my whims and since the location of the town of Calamity itself is somewhat vague I think I may letter the Calamity railroad as the Colorado and Northwestern, time will tell.

Bachmann 4-4-0 American in On30

Building Calamity - Tinkering with the board

I have a ton of buildings at this point, 24 built, 12 of those have received their initial weathering treatment and 1 has actually received paint. The remaining 12 have been primed and are ready to be weathered. Now that the painting stage is rushing towards me I need to think about the board.

There are a few things I know already:
1) 6'x4' table (I have two tables rescued from the closure of Attactix, which I had designed and built for the store).

2) Semi-modular; only in the sense that I want to be able to transport and store the boards so I will build it in 3 2'x4' sections. This will also give me the ability to expand if I want to.

3) Buildings will be removable; Right now I'm thinking that each building will be built on its own 'sabot'. If I can keep the sabots down to a couple of different sizes I should be able to re-arrange the buildings to a certain extent and introduce new ones. That will change the look of Calamity. Maybe I'll take it as far as having brick building replacements for when the massive fire sweeps through town (not an uncommon occurrence in western history).

4) A river or stream; mostly to provide a terrain feature below the level of the table surface. This requirement will be the one that really determines the thickness of the foam I'll need to use for base. If the sabots are on 1" foam I'll need at least another 1" layer underneath that, maybe just go for 2" for a 3" thick board.

5) A railroad; Since I have already been acquiring S Scale equipment and track the railroad is definitely in.
6) Bridge; The citizens of Calamity are going to be a frugal bunch so rather than build and maintain a gallows they will be hanging folks from a the railroad bridge as a cheaper expedient.

7) Alignment and locking mechanism of some kind. I don't want the boards to separate during play and I want them to stay lined up correctly. This especially important since a number of the buildings are going to be located across the seams. Right now I'm thinking something simple like pegs to handle this job.

8) Hide the seams. I know that players aren't likely to be disturbed by the seams very much but I'm looking at a lot of seams if I go with the sabot concept. I'll definitely have to work in scenery to hide those as much as possible.

And here are a few concepts that I have been doodling with:

Calamity - Train Size vs Building Size

In a Old West Building thread, from one of the forums I occasionally frequent, we have been having a discussion about the size of the train versus the size of the buildings. We tend to get very focused on how the engines and cars look with the miniatures that we forget how they might look with our terrain. Anyone that has read my rantings on the subject knows that I'm firmly in the S Scale camp and have stated on more than one occasion that O Scale is just to big. Well, prompted by some responses from the other forum I snapped some pictures of my American Flyer S Scale 4-4-0 and the sole baggage car I own next to some of the western buildings that I have been working on. I took a lot of pictures to give you an idea of how my slightly oversized S Scale models look next to those buildings. This is a bit picture intensive (and really most of my posts tend to be picture intensive anyway so what did you expect?) so let's see how things match up!

First lets take a look at the engine up against some one story buildings.

Knuckleduster/Tri-City Laser. About what I expected, these buildings are short so are almost hidden behind the engine.

Battle Flag - I like this look better. The False front is easily seen bu the rest of the building is mostly hidden.

Sarissa - Precission. Maybe a little on the small side but I can see the False Front . I like the look of this overall.

Now my engine up against some of the two story buildings

Here is a Gamecraft building. Looks about right. I wish the windows were a little higher up.

Here is the Knuckleduster/Tri-City laser Hotel. This one looks pretty good. The location is different because there is not enough depth on my workbench to fit the length of the hotel with train in front of it so I had to shoot to the side.

Battle Flag Photographer's Studio. I consider this one to be just about perfect.

Sarissa-Precision. A little on the short side but not bad looking.

Now let's take a look at how the baggage car looks. It is not as tall as the engine so you can see more beyond it.

Knuckleduster/Tri-City Laser. This is looking pretty good, at least you can see its not completely hidden.

Battle Flag General Store. You can see the entire False Front,  looks good.

Sarissa-Precision. Again this one looks a bit on the short side but you can see a good portion of the False Front.

Gamecraft building. Overall the height look good, if the windows were a little higher I would be very happy.

Sarissa-Precision. Still on the short side but definitely passable

Knuckleduster/Tri-City Laser. Height wise it looks good, but the windows could be a little higher.

Battle Flag. Pretty much perfection in my book.

The last comparison is how the engine and baggage car look against my most dominate structure at this time, the Livery Stable.

I think the Livery stable still looks pretty dominate in these pictures. I'm pretty happy with how these are meshing together. The engine is a bit on the large side as well and is probably not exactly S Scale. I think if it was a little smaller it would be a near perfect match to the buildings.

Calamity acquires a Baggage Car

I have managed to acquire one of the three cars that came with the S scale American Flyer Frontiersman set. There are three cars that make up this set; a baggage car, a combination baggage/passenger car and a regular passenger car. I would like to acquire a second baggage car to convert into an express/mail car. I'm still trying to get my hands on the combination car as well as two passenger cars if I can swing it. There are more of these on eBay than I expected to find. It looks like any freight cars I want will have to be scratch built though and I'll need to acquire the American Flyer knuckle coupler trucks so that everything works together.

Here are pics of the recent acquisition along with a few Black Scorpion Miniatures for scale.